Wikipedia talk:Licensing update

I think the intended meaning of the license is that the whole of Wikimedia is one site. It's not clearly defined though, that I can see. --Tango (talk) 22:38, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm getting clarification on this though. ViperSnake151 22:52, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I think it's fair to say whatever the case, they definitely meant to cover all of en-wikipedia, and probably all of the WMF projects. We were the key drivers of the move. That doesn't mean they didn't screw up the wording and whatever they intended isn't going to be legally actionable, but it does mean it's far less likely IMHO. Nil Einne (talk) 13:09, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Something helpful

Here's something that would be really helpful: an itemized list of what the practical differences are between the two licenses. I've read Larry Sanger's explanation of why Citizendium chose CC-BY-SA, but it's long on moral exposition and very, very short on concise practicalities. Does anyone have anything of the sort?--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 16:26, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Comparison of GFDL and CC-BY-SA mess with it and all that. ViperSnake151 20:25, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

None of those arguments there are compelling, but if WMF thinks CC-BY-SA is better, so be it. Pcap ping 07:33, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

There are 2 important differences:

1. If you want to print out an article and hand it to your history class, you will no longer be required to hand out a 5-page license agreement with each copy; instead you just need to include the URL for the license.
2. Wikipedia content will be interoperable with content from cc-by-sa sites like Citizendium, Wikitravel, etc. In other words, we'll be able to trade content back and forth without running into licensing problems.

Hope that helps. Kaldari (talk) 19:44, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Confused

Okay I admit, I'm confused. Why do people think this is going to create a problem for transwiking within the WMF. Whether or not we are 'one site' seems somewhat irrelevant. At least from the FAQ (I haven't bothered to read the text), the only thing the November 1th deadline affects is material that was not originally released to a public wiki. Any material that was originally added to a public wiki under the GFDL 1.2 or later is fine whenever it was added (e.g. the year 3000). Whether it's a WMF site, some other public wiki that hates wikipedia, or whatever it doesn't matter. The FAQ seems quite clear on this to me. If you are talking about copying stuff from, e.g. someone's blog released under the GFDL 1.2 or later then yes, it will be a problem. But transwiking is fine. Clearly if you transwiki something, but that wiki didn't care about the issue and so was copying GFDL stuff from non-public wikis, that would be an issue but that's a problem with the original source of the other wiki, not with transwiking itself. Nil Einne (talk) 13:22, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Just do it

Shouldn't be a problem, just make sure you don't miss the August 2009 deadline. Stifle (talk) 14:08, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

RFC: Take the Plunge

Note: This section has been listed on RFC and Template:Cent in order to make sure all interested parties have notice. If you can think of somewhere else to announce it, please do.

There is a FAQ regardling the transition on meta: meta:Licensing_update/Questions_and_Answers Additional questions may be added to that page, where they will be answered by members of the WMF.

Discussion

Okay, its been a few weeks for us to settle in on this GFDL 1.3 mayhem, but now we have to face reality.

Are we gonna do it, or not? Note, like every other Wikipedia discussion, this is not a vote. ViperSnake151 23:30, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

There is no doubt that the sooner wikipedia switches the easier it will be. Jon513 (talk) 14:13, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

• Support. Having two incompatible licenses in common use is becoming more and more of a problem, inhibiting the free flow of information in and out of Wikipedia. Knol and the German Wikipedia use CC-BY-SA, MIT's OpenCourseWare uses CC-NC-BY-SA. It doesn't matter to me if we switch to CC-BY-SA or insist that GFDL 1.3 stay compatible past the August deadline; surely we have the clout to do that. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:36, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
• Support. See above discussion for my reason. Pcap ping 14:31, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
• Support. I don't think I have to repeat the cases for the switch, for there are many. -- Taku (talk) 23:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
• Support, I think the transition is a good idea, and the arguments against it don't seem to be much of an issue to me. Wizardman 00:17, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
• Support We should absolutely add CC-BY-SA. This will make our content more usable, will allow us to use more content from other sources, and is a simple and easy to understand license. It's win win win for us (and everyone else). --Falcorian ^(talk) 01:32, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
• Support The sooner the better. Are there any similar proposals on other WM projects, like Commons? One fell swoop, and all that. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 08:00, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
• Support Boooooo confusing "copyleft" licenses! Hooray BEER! --harej 15:42, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
• Support — {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 16:10, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
• Comment: Why is this discussed locally here at the English Wikipedia? According to Erik [1], the discussion is supposed to be community-wide (i.e. on meta, so that users from other Wikimedia projects may participate). --Kjetil r (talk) 16:47, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

• It just helps to have consensus logged somewhere instead of spreading it over 1000 different pages. ViperSnake151 20:53, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, get going. Stifle (talk) 11:01, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
• Support. This will make our content really free, I mean really free, like John Denver free. Kaldari (talk) 19:49, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
• Support The differences don't seem major, and I haven't seen any reasons not to.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 02:18, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
• Well, it'll be up to me to spit in the soup then. I say no. That's a paraphrase. The full version involves one of these, Erik Moller and the rest of the WMF, Creative Commons and their license, especially section 4c, the FSF, and the poor overloaded horse which conveyed all of the foregoing to the place where they're at.rather graphic images. I'm sure you can reconstruct it. Greg Maxwell's thoughts at meta:License are still worth a look because 4c hasn't changed. Angus McLellan (Talk) 19:20, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
• Questions: If somebody has granted a Wikipedia editor permission to copy their copyrighted material pursuant to GFDL, and the license changes to CC-BY-SA, what happens? Also, what of the absence of a requirement to distribute warranty disclaimers? Does this not expose individual contributors to liability? 69.140.152.55 (talk) 02:45, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't think so. The GFDL is non-revocable, so I would assume that if we migrate to a different license in accordance with the terms of the GFDL (which we would be, should this proposal pass), there should not be any problem. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 15:44, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
  • GFDL content added BEFORE November 1st from non-Wikis is safe. ViperSnake151 18:56, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose: According to this, there is no requirement that the original (Wikipedia general) disclaimer be redistributed. It seems that CC-BY-SA includes its own disclaimer, but that disclaimer is buried where readers are not likely to see it. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 02:56, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

The GFDL says that you have to "preserve any warranty disclaimers". For the purposes of the license, the General disclaimer is a warranty disclaimer, and our copyright page explicitly states that Wikipedia content is subject to them, and thus under the GFDL are required to be redistributed. ViperSnake151 15:41, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

• Support - Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia. A one page article isn't really free if you can only distribute it with a 5 page license. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support Think of the trees man! BJ^Talk 19:00, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support CC-BY-SA is no silver bullet, but it has much less problems than GFDL. GFDL as it is now is essentially prohibiting free dissemination of knowledge, not promoting it (as in: if I want to print a section from article I should also print all of Category:Wikipedia disclaimers (5 of them!), whole GFDL text, and all this only to give my students one or two paragraphs to read in class). This is insane, to say the least. --Grebenkov (talk) 12:59, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support Dealing with offline people is a lot easier with CC-by-sa than GFDL - I'm trying to get politicians' photos and the like, dealing with people whose only exposure to technology is very structured and minimalist, and it makes it so much easier when you can show them an easy to read webpage which explains exactly what rights they maintain and which ones they grant. Orderinchaos 18:25, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support. CC licenses are more international. --Alexander Sigachov (talk) 18:58, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support — neuro^(talk) 21:45, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support - Yes please. Cumulus Clouds (talk) 03:26, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support I've been sitting back and taking everything in for awhile; this seems like a good idea. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 08:05, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support The two licenses follow the same spirit and this would prevent a lot of redundant, open content being created solely because of license incompatibility. The only issue is the number of people creating non-wiki content who either couldn't be contacted or would be unwilling to relicense their content so that it could be used on Wikipedia. I suspect that the amount of content created by such people is small. Any work that's large, the owner would probably be wiling to do it. -Nathan J. Yoder (talk) 02:31, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support dual licensing. But the licences must also include future versions. eg cc-v4 whenever it is released. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:59, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support, for a number of reasons:
  • CC-BY-SA is a simpler license than the GFDL, and simpler licenses are Just Better;
  • CC-BY-SA applies better to collaboratively-produced wiki content than does the GFDL;
  • CC-BY-SA is designed for all kinds of content, not just software manuals like the GFDL was originally intended to be applied to.

– Thomas H. Larsen 02:22, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

• Support CC is more generic and popular.--Kwj2772 (talk) 09:28, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support.  Sandstein  13:32, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
• Support After reviewing, seem to be a better license suited to this project. Better to have this one than multiple. – Alex43223 ^{T | C | E} 08:06, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support, and we should get moving. I'm not too worried about the "catch" -- if we've imported any GFDL material the proper way since November 1, we've got a record of it and we can deal with it -- but this small headache gets bigger the longer we wait. rspεεr (talk) 10:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Support: Same reasons as all the other support votes; CC-by-sa 3.0 is a better license for us. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 17:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support. I believe the Foundation will be setting up a project wide referendum kinda like a board of trustees election though, so this might be jumping the gun a little, but no harm in getting the word out there a bit early I guess. --Sherool (talk) 03:02, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
• Can you say CC-BY-SA 3.0? miranda 03:46, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Support. CC licenses are better suited for projects like this than a license designed for tech documentation that was used only because it was the only one available at the time. *Dan T.* (talk) 05:56, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
• Strong, Speedy Support. It's time for change. -- samj _in^out 14:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
• Strong, Speedy Support I like cc-by-sa. -- WonRyong (talk) 09:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
• Support, but with some frustration that the chosen license is CC-BY-SA rather than something much simpler like MIT or BSD. (I don't buy the argument that software licenses are not suitable for written/artistic content; they're used for that all the time without problems.) In any case, the fewer licenses the better, even if they are still overcomplicated. --David-Sarah Hopwood (talk) 16:35, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Page histories

Often there are calls to preserve page histories in order to meet the GFDL. Does this requirement apply to the new license? Page histories ought to be preserved anyway for reasons of transparency and historical interest, I hope the new license doesn't mean we can go around deleting everything. 140.247.242.17 (talk) 04:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

The new license will still require attribution, which is a requirement that Wikipedia meets through page histories. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 04:49, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

To do

Just a note that if/when we decide to move to GFDL 1.3, the pages that will need updating include:

• MediaWiki:Copyright
• MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning
• MediaWiki:Edittools
• Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License
• Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter
• Wikipedia:GFDL upgrade

MBisanz ^talk 19:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Fantastic, thanks. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:09, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Non-acceptance of Non-wiki GFDL

Okay, how are we gonna go about this? ViperSnake151 15:35, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

A lot of talking is taking place on the foundation mailing list. For more information you should sign up to it. Jon513 (talk) 16:31, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I may join the list later, but I'll give a quick answer here: you'd basically need permission from the copyright owner to relicense it under CC-BY-SA. I would suspect that most would be more than willing, so it's not much of an issue. Not being able to contact them would be more of an issue. -Nathan J. Yoder (talk) 02:28, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Vote will be organized in Meta

I'd like to let you know the vote for migration to CC-BY-SA will be organized in Meta. See this foundation-l archive. Thanks.--Kwj2772 (talk) 11:54, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

See m:licensing update. Stifle (talk) 21:55, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The WMF doesn't decide what each project licenses as, it's on a per-site basis. Why would such a discussion be on Meta, rather than the local projects? The WMF can't tell en.wikinews what to use anymore than they can tell pl.wp or en.wp. rootology (C)(T) 14:59, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually it can, see m:Foundation issues points four and five. MBisanz ^talk 15:01, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Huh, I missed that resolution where they snuck that in. Or was that always the case, that they can decide which of the two, or to switch it? So they can tell us to go CC or Wikinews to go GFDL? rootology (C)(T) 15:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Always been the case, since at least 2004 when that page was created (which pre-dated the WMF itself and referenced Jimbo's ownership of the servers). Yea, they could also force WN or whatever license they want from my understanding of how things operate. MBisanz ^talk 15:23, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

...all of which makes sense in any case - someone needs to find order in the chaos. -- samj _in^out 14:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

They can not tell Wikinews to switch to GFDL, the CC-BY-SA license does not allow it. The only reason they can go the other way is that they have convinced the free software foundation to release a new version of the GFDL license with a new temporary clause that spesificaly allow the operator of a collaborative site to re-license matarial previosuly licensed under GFDL version 1.2 or later as CC-BY-SA 3.0 instead. It's a one time deal available for a limited time only, basicaly a "legal hack" to designed spesificaly for to allow the Wikimedia projects to legaly move away from the GFDL license without permanently changing the license. In order to maintain license compatability between all it's projects the Foundation have stated that they will not do the change unless all projects agree to it though. In oter words we can't change the license of the English Wikipedia only if other language versions don't agree to the cange for some reason. --Sherool (talk) 16:17, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Co-licensing

I've raised a question about co-licensing in light of the potential transition at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights#Co-licensing? Please weigh in. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:18, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

List of CC-BY-SA -licensed (deleted) articles

Having come across a couple of articles taken from CC-BY-SA sources over the past couple of days during my patrols at WP:SCV, and as such licenses aren't compatible with the GFDL at the moment (see here), it seems like it'd be a good idea to maintain a list of such articles which have been deleted or had the content removed. This would allow us to restore the articles or potentially useful content once the much vaunted transition occurs. Thoughts? – Toon^(talk) 14:19, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Who is allowed to vote?

I just got an error trying to vote. Remco47 (talk) 03:14, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Me, too. I'm not registered there. It told me that only an admin (presumably at that site) could register. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:49, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I got the same error. My problem was NoScript. Once I turned that off and started over again it worked fine. You don't need to register on the voting site, Wikipedia will pass along your credentials (unless of course something like NoScript is blocking it). I may have turned off CSlite too, but I don't remember. ;-) Hope that helps! --Falcorian ^(talk) 16:24, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I have voted. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:05, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

About the voting

I apparently missed this. Since this affects EVERYONE, including IP users, why isn't this on the header....? rootology (C)(T) 03:16, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Uhh it is. It's been rotating. ViperSnake151  Talk  12:40, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

So what happened?

The vote's come and gone. So are we doing it? PhageRules1 (talk) 22:10, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

The Meta page on the topic is probably a better place to check for updates. Their timeline shows that the next planned event is "Result is shared by the license update committee with the Board of Trustees" on May 15. I imagine we'll hear sometime after that. --Falcorian ^(talk) 00:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

More pages that will need to be updated

• Wikipedia:What the GFDL is not
• Wikipedia:Revocation of GFDL is not permitted
• Wikipedia:Multi-licensing (now that multi-licensing is a site-wide thing, not just something that a few weird users do voluntarily)
• Template:NoMultiLicense (as discussed on WP:VPP; users with this template will have to at least implicitly agree to it being changed)

rspεεr (talk) 17:08, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Also wikipedia:verbatim copying -- anon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.208.114.181 (talk) 11:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Copying from one Wikipedia page to another

Currently, the processes of splitting and merging are built around the GFDL licensing requirements. (Link to new/expanded article in edit summary; link at original/duplicated article noting merge/split.) Will these need to be altered after the transition, and, if so, in what way? Does anybody know? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:24, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Assuming the text at Meta doesn't change, the CC-BY-SA credit for material taken from Wikimedia projects will be satisfied by the link to the original. So the merge/split procedures shouldn't need to change for that. Anomie⚔ 15:22, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! So it'll simply be a matter of noting the co-licensing in the process pages. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:24, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Application

Any movement on this? At one point do we stop displaying material granted under GFDL only after November 2008 that was not originally a multi-user site? (See Cyrk (Art), for instance.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:14, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of a plan regarding how that material is going to be handled... You might have better luck stiring up discussion on Meta or the Wikipedia or Wikimedia mailing list. Please do report back if you find anything! --Falcorian ^(talk) 17:50, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

yes 雨小純 (talk) 01:27, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

New template

{{CCPermissionNeeded}}

Explains itself. ViperSnake151  Talk  15:05, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

GFDL-only imports from non-Wikimedia wikis after November 1, 2008

I see some discussion above about the status of GFDL material imported from non-Wikimedia wikis after November 1, 2008 (stuff from Wikimedia wikis is not a problem, since all GFDL Wikimedia wikis are making the same license transition). The discussion above seems to conclude that it's OK to keep those, but discussion at WP:VPP#Can we still import GFDL text? has reached the conclusion that it's not OK since the GFDL's text says "other than this MMC" rather than "other than a MMC" (emphasis mine). Has anyone asked the appropriate people about the status of these imports? Anomie⚔ 15:36, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Opting out

How do I opt out if I do not wish the license on my images to be updated ? Racklever (talk) 16:56, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't know for Wikipedia hosted images. But for commons you can find more information here and here. --Falcorian ^(talk) 20:36, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Update content restrictions section?

The section currently says, "Any site intending to migrate must do so before Aug. 1, 2009." Should we update it or just take that part out? delldot ∇. 02:37, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Post-migration status

Now that 1 August 2009 has passed, reading through the GDFL I presume Wikipedia has republished all its GDFL content under CC-BY-SA. In order to simplify things for our re-users, can we change the licensing tags on images to say CC-BY-SA (possibly mentioning previously GDFL and also available under those terms). AndrewRT(Talk) 00:20, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

"GFDL 1.2 only"

Now in the text there is mentioned "GFDL 1.2 only" yet however I don't think there is such a license. There is GFDL 1.2 which is probably what was meant by that and then there's GFDL 1.2 or any later version which is obviously something different. I think it would be best to remove the misleading word only. Agreed? Of course somebody can say "GFDL 1.2 only" but that is redundant and thus implicitly slightly misleading. Palosirkka (talk) 16:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)